In the News: Mutilated Books, Bad Poetry

A wealthy rare-books collector has been sentenced to two years in prison for cutting pages out of a hundred and fifty texts in the British Library.

According to a recent study, the number of children who choose to read books in their free time fell five per cent in the last year, although the number who read every day held steady at twenty-eight per cent.

President Obama has admitted that he wrote “very bad poetry” in college.

An upcoming auction at Christie’s will include a dollhouse believed to have been decorated by the novelist Charlotte Brontë and a desk chair used by the poet William Wordsworth.

The English translation of “Toby Alone,” by the French playwright Timothée de Fombelle, has won the Marsh award for best children’s literature in translation; the story follows the adventures of a miniature community that lives in an oak tree.

The writer Alan DeNiro explains why he switched from poetry to science fiction.

The founders of the Uncrowned Queens Institute for Research and Education on Women, at the University at Buffalo, in New York, have compiled and edited a collection of letters to Michelle Obama entitled “Go, Tell Michelle: African American Women Write to the New First Lady.”

A con man has been convicted of killing a reclusive prize-winning British writer in order to steal his identity and money.

A twenty-two-year-old San Diego college student who is selling her virginity online has been signed by the David Black Literary Agency.

The eighty-nine-year-old science-fiction writer Frederik Pohl has started blogging.

Evangeline Lilly, one of the stars of the television series “Lost,” has announced that when the show ends, she intends to spend more time on her first love, writing.